Maintaining a Personal Web Page While on the Job Market

A philosophy graduate student writes:

As a graduate student preparing for the academic job market, I've noticed that a significant number of my peers maintain personal webpages, where others can view their CV's, teaching portfolio documents, and perhaps even draft copies of their publications. I've also noticed that some people include family photos and other personal anecdotes, which strikes me as unnecessary, and perhaps a bad idea to boot. My questions about this, for your blog readers if possible, are:

-How helpful or important are personal websites to job market success?

-What sort of content should be on one's personal website?

-What sort of content should be avoided, aside from the obvious?

Building and maintaining a personal website is quite a bit of work, so it would be helpful for me, and I imagine other graduate students who are about to enter the market, to know how to approach the question of whether to have a personal website, and especially how much energy to devote to it.

Thoughts from readers welcome--both students/job seekers with experience, and faculty who have been involved in searches and perhaps had occasion to look at student homepages?

Comments

Maintaining a Personal Web Page While on the Job Market

A philosophy graduate student writes:

As a graduate student preparing for the academic job market, I've noticed that a significant number of my peers maintain personal webpages, where others can view their CV's, teaching portfolio documents, and perhaps even draft copies of their publications. I've also noticed that some people include family photos and other personal anecdotes, which strikes me as unnecessary, and perhaps a bad idea to boot. My questions about this, for your blog readers if possible, are:

-How helpful or important are personal websites to job market success?

-What sort of content should be on one's personal website?

-What sort of content should be avoided, aside from the obvious?

Building and maintaining a personal website is quite a bit of work, so it would be helpful for me, and I imagine other graduate students who are about to enter the market, to know how to approach the question of whether to have a personal website, and especially how much energy to devote to it.

Thoughts from readers welcome--both students/job seekers with experience, and faculty who have been involved in searches and perhaps had occasion to look at student homepages?